Sacked for snapping footballer in The Money Shop

Natasha Shields, a 26-year-old mum from Newcastle, has been sacked from her job at a money transfer and payday loans company. When Newcastle United striker Papiss Cisse used The Money Shop to send money home to Senegal, she took a picture of him on her mobile. It was uploaded to Facebook, and her employers were not impressed.

And she's not the first person to find social media has harmed their career.

Shields told the Newcastle Chronicle that she was just excited to have spotted a celebrity in the shop. She took a photo of him and sent it to her long-term partner. He uploaded it to Facebook, where it was widely shared before being deleted 24 hours later.

The Mirror reported that The Money Shop felt she had breached customer confidentiality, and she was fired. The company told the Chronicle: "Money Shop customers are entitled to conduct their business confidentially. Any actions on behalf of staff which compromise that confidentiality can only be treated as gross misconduct, resulting in dismissal to preserve the integrity of the business and the trust of our customers. That is the case in this instance."

And Shields is far from the first person to find their career harmed by social media.

Sick

There are those who expose the fact they have thrown a 'sickie'. These include the Swiss insurance worker who called into work to say she couldn't sit in front a computer and needed to lie down in the dark. Her employer then saw she was active on Facebook during the day and fired her.

Meanwhile a Chamber of Commerce employee in Austria took it one step further. He was fired after boasting about his holiday on Facebook - when he was officially on sick leave and signed off by his GP.

Criticise

Then there are those who criticise their employer and are caught out. Some of the most famous examples include the 13 Virgin Atlantic cabin crew who were sacked in 2008 for criticising the airline and calling its passengers chavs.

Then there was the woman - known as Lindsay - who has gone down in Facebook history. In 2009 she ranted: "'My boss is always making me do s*** stuff just to p*** me off!!" Unfortunately she had forgotten that she was friends with him on Facebook.

He replied "Hi Lindsay, I guess you forgot about adding me on here? He then added: "That 's*** stuff ' is called your 'job', you know, what I pay you to do. And lastly, you also seem to have forgotten that you have two weeks left on your six-month trial period. Don't bother coming in tomorrow."

Rules

And finally, there are those - like Shields - who inadvertently break the rules of their employer. This happened to a waitress in the US last January, who posted a photograph on Reddit of a receipt from a customer who refused to tip. The customer had written 'I give God 10%. Why do you get 18?' over the 18% gratuity charge." The waitress was deemed to have violated the privacy of the Pastor who had left the note.